The German Ideology

Image of a handwritten page from The German Ideology.

The German Ideology (Die Deutsche Ideologie) is a text comprising two volumes written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1845. The first volume critiques German philosophers Feuerbach, Bauer and Stirner. The second volume critiques contemporary German Socialism. In the brief handwritten preface to the work, Marx notes the unscientific manner in which the philosophers to be criticized denounce the Hegelian view. While they protest against the ideas that have dominated the world of men they continue to accept "that the real world is a product of the world of ideas."

Volume 1. Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks

I. Criticism of Feuerbach and exposition of historical materialism

Marx objects that the struggle to do away with Hegel's Absolute Spirit has taken place in the world of ideas. The young Hegelians have built their own thought upon fragments of Hegel's system such that "each takes one aspect of the Hegelian system and turns this against the whole system as well as against the aspects chosen by others." . The dogmatic acceptance of the Hegelian logic by all of these critics – e.g., Stirner, Bauer, Feuerbach – means that even as each of them claim to go beyond Hegel's categories they continue to grant existence to a supersensible world beyond material existence. Inasmuch as their conceptualizations of history criticize the effects of Hegelian 'illusions of consciousness' and demand a new view of life, they seem to make a philosophical advance. However, Marx points out that insofar as they merely exchange one form of consciousness for another, they have remained thoroughgoing idealists.

For Marx, the weakness of transcendental idealism as a starting point of history is its detachment from the material conditions of life. "The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals." The organization by men of their production of the means of subsistence is the "mode of life" that Marx says distinguishes men from animals and constitutes the basis of their social interactions. The problem of Hegel’s philosophy is the appearance of an opposition of ideas but with no connection to material life. Insofar as the philosophers base their thought on ideas separated from the material facts of existence, they remains in the discursive space of Hegelian shapes of consciousness and have not left the Hegelian system. The system of relations Marx proposes in The German Ideology overcomes the Hegelian view insofar as it originates not in ideas or consciousness but in "real individuals, their activity and the material conditions of their life." How we define individuals will be based not on abstractions but on their production, the manner of their production, the conditions of production and, finally, the result of their production. Conceived within the larger framework of populations, the organization of production can be construed as a conglomeration of productive forces through which the division of labor, i.e., the organization of work – for example, commercial, agricultural, industrial – creates the conditions by which opposition can be seen to arise between classes. Marx equates these stages of development with forms of property, "i.e., the existing stage in the division of labour determines also the relations of individuals to another with reference to the material, instrument and product of labour" [Emphasis added].Ideology, 38.</ref> Accordingly, Marx gives a history of "the various stages of development in the division of labour as just so many different forms of property" in order to trace the appearance of the historical conditions of opposition which result "the antithesis of town and country," of industry and commerce, the foundation of his theorization of base and superstructure.

The third form of property described by Marx appears in the feudal system and represents for the nobility a necessary organization of economic and political arrangements. Ideas, conceptions and ideologies descend not from the abstract conditions posited by German philosophy but from the antagonisms, and material conditions of the "life-process." In this way ideas are never dependent of or the cause of actual existence as the young Hegelians suppose but are derived from material existence. In certain respects, Marx’s existential reading of consciousness as a mode of reading history that should not be divorced from experience does not seem to be as far removed from Hegel as he would like if we accept Alexandre Kojève's immanent reading of Hegel’s philosophy. However, what Marx proposes is not merely an immanent starting point but the abolishment of consciousness. Marx’s contribution can be distinguished from the immanent reading of Hegelian philosophy if the argument of the Ideology concerning consciousness - that is, Marx’s assertion of the inadequacy of 'consciousness' as a viable philosophical standpoint - is taken seriously. In this respect, the conclusion that any true revolution must take place in concrete existence bears on the criticism of Feuerbach. According to Marx, Feuerbach resorts to universals in his descriptions of the world thus failing to account for actual historical elements of that sensuous world. Further, although he is a type of materialist, Feuerbach's characterization of man and nature as objective ideals implies an essentialization by which Marx thinks "materialism and history diverge completely."

In Marx's view, to conceive of man or of philosophy one must first define life. "But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life." An "earthly basis for history," however, implies the creation of new needs, the creation of which Marx considers to be an historical act. In the creation of new needs can be seen the beginning of the theorization of the base and superstructure, formulation of which is necessary if the class ruling over material forces is to properly regulate and universalize the production and the dissemination of ideas. "Men, who daily re-create their own life, begin to make other men, to propagate their kind: the relation between men and women, parents and children, the family.".

The progress of the ideas superimposed upon man are qualified at each stage such that the social relation which is the family unit is subsumed into larger populations with new and greater needs. Marx reinterprets this process by turning upside down Hegel’s 'three moments.' He redefines them as a) the original first need of life to maintain itself, b) the appearance – during satisfaction of a) – of new needs, and c) the inevitable development of new social relations through the fulfillment of the previous two 'moments,' therefore the necessity and appearance of abstraction from the point of view of the power in possession of the means of production. The continual change in connections thus represents a passing of life into 'the concept,' i.e., a history which to the extent that it is a history can be conceived as a consciousness. "But," writes Marx, "even from the outset this is not 'pure' consciousness.".

In contradiction to those who view consciousness as a transcendental starting point, for Marx consciousness is not an abstraction but a social product arising from material life. It is in the description of the first moment that the structure Marx employs resembles that of Hegel, e.g., in the assertion that "Consciousness is, at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment." ". However, care must be taken in coming to this conclusion insofar as Marx's first, immediate, moment represents a consciously instinctual form of material production, a historical moment rather than a consciousness. it is from this moment that the division of labor arises. However, this moment enters history only when the division of material and mental labor becomes apparent. The inequality of distribution and interests is clearly revealed in the family inasmuch as within the family an uneven disposition of labor and property exists, the elements of class struggle can be theorized concerning larger populations, i.e., the productive forces within a state that have arisen due to the conglomerations of tribes or families.

In a conclusion not lacking its Hegelian trace, Marx asserts that "as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own ded becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the division of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape" (53). The division of labor, the manner of its development of productive forces, concentrates production in such a way that it becomes an alien force in which the materials and fruits of labor, the beginning and end segments of production, are unknown to the producer. Man is estranged from his own production. The division of labor is not a concept but an activity. In the same way, communism is not defined in conceptual terms, as "a state of affairs which is to be established," but, rather, is "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the now existing premise" (57). The historical materialism outlined in the Ideology entails the theater of history to the extent that history provides the premise to be abolished through its own unfolding. Thus history does not evolve from a theory of ideal natures but from the concrete transformations of world-historical, empirical, relations. However, Marx cautions that 'history' may be speculatively distorted if its 'consciousness' is conceived as one that establishes goals upon the facts of current relations, that is, if we define consciousness as the a priori idea underlying history and driving the motor of events. To the contrary, says Marx, each generation "uses the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity" (58).

On the basis of the previous, Marx now theorizes that 1) there will come a point in the development of productive forces in which machinery and money come to represent disruptive rather than productive forces insofar as the estrangement of production results in a class deprived of the advantages of their own labor, and 2) that revolutionary struggle in that case will be directed against the class in power, the class in control of the means of production, and 3) that this revolution, one which will effect a dissolution of classes and labor, is to be conducted by "the class that no longer counts as a class within society," (60) and 4) that production on a large scale of such a communist 'consciousness' will require a revolution, the establishment of a "real ground of history,” in order to rid society of the chimerical ideas that up to now have been the products of its consciousness.

What Marx suggests here is that particular universalizations of ideas depending on the class that rules. "History must, therefore, always be written according to an extraneous standard; the real production of life appears as non-historical, while the historical appears as something separated from ordinary life, something extra-superterrestrial" (63). For Marx, the Hegelian system stands at the apex of this philosophical tendency of the rule-makers. While perhaps not intending to, Feuerbach makes the error of making communism subservient to a 'nature' external to material existence because he assigns to each man and thing an 'essence' beyond material conditions of experience.

But how does history come to be 'retroactively' organized in this way? And how has the Hegelian idea come to predominate? Marx theorizes that "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time is ruling intellectual force" (67). The entire conception of a society, its zeitgeist, is charged by the prevailing dominant material force. If such a force should cease to hold power it is still possible that from the ideas placed into production a concept of history may arise as, says Marx, "has been done by speculative philosophy" (69). Man is turned into a concept, a 'self-consciousness' external to material life. Marx’s criticism is that while Feuerbach grants the importance of material existence he still clings in some way to Hegel’s transcendental architectonic.

To realize this truth, that an illusion has been imposed upon material life, Marx claims that one need only "separate the ideas of those ruling for empirical reasons, under empirical conditions and as corporeal individuals, from these rulers" (70). When the 'mystical' reconstruction of history by the few is understood, one then perceives that "the manufacturers of history" accrue some advantage when they replace material life with a conceptualization of history favorable to their organization of production.

Marx distinguishes here between a "natural instrument of production" and those created by civilization. These two powers, of nature and society, function under distinct theses that result in different forms of domination. The form of exchange arising in the first case, of a natural instrument of production, implies a bond between men and products in which "individuals are subservient to nature". In the second case, of instruments of production created by civilization, men are subservient "to a product of labor" (71). In the former, the division of mental and material labor is not yet evident. In the latter, an intermediary party possesses the means of production. But when labor submits to the products of labor, it means nothing other than that man submits to "accumulated labor, capital" (71). Historically, Marx situates the most important division of labor in the split between country and town insofar as this split represents the beginning of the domestication of labor, its submission to and its creation in the image of the ruler: man becomes the production of another and therefore experiences alienation from his own production. This split allows for the development of the town and, therefore, the necessary introduction of police, taxation and other means of administering the productive order of its now 'concentrated population' (72).